Sydney rail commuters face disruption from fresh round of work bans

“We can’t just hand over a blank cheque, particularly when you consider that we’ve said no to nurses. The government, we believe, was forced to take emergency action in the federal court.”

Loading

Rail Tram and Bus Union state secretary Toby Warnes described the premier’s remarks about the two sides being too far apart as “absolute rubbish”, adding that they were in fact “within a whisker” of reaching an agreement on pay on Saturday night.

Warnes said the legal action had “extremely damaged” negotiations between the two sides, and was likely to result in the dispute lasting for months.

“We never saw anything as bad as what we saw over the weekend. Obviously, the new Labor government was in the wilderness for so long,” he said. “It is just adopting the Liberal Party’s playbook from the last 12 years of Coalition government.”

With NSW Labor and the unions now further apart, an exclusive survey reveals only 18 per cent of voters think the government should refuse the demands of rail workers.

Loading

Instead, when asked for their preferred outcome to the unions’ push for an 8 per cent annual pay rise and a reduced 35-hour week, 46 per cent of voters said the Minns government should “negotiate a better deal” with workers.

The latest Resolve Political Monitor, conducted for this masthead by research company Resolve Strategic, found 15 per cent of voters believe the government should “agree to the unions’ demands in full” while 21 per cent were unsure.

The survey was conducted from December 4 to 8, the period in which the unions and the government were meeting daily in a bid to end the deadlock.

Despite the orders on Sunday blocking industrial action, commuters experienced service disruptions on Sydney’s rail network on Monday due to the flow-on effects from the rail operators preparing for industrial action. On Monday morning, 75 suburban trains were delayed and 18 cancelled.

Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the decision to seek an injunction was appropriate because it gave the government time to return train services to normal. “I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to reach an agreement. We do now have some certainty to protect passengers,” she said.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.